During target tracking, a radar system obtains measurements from targets in order to maintain an estimate of their current state, which typically includes kinematic components (e.g., position, velocity, and acceleration, etc.) and other components such as radiated signal strength, spectral characteristic, feature information, coupling coefficients, propagation velocity, etc. Tracks of the targets are estimated and updated by using the radar measurements such as the target's range, angular position, and rate. In a multiple hypothesis tracker, a track is a set of associated detections or observations that represent the estimate of a single target's motion.
When an obstruction (e.g., a wall) is present between the radar system and a target, the radar beam and return signals have to pass through the obstruction in order to track the target. In addition, if the target is surrounded by, for example, multiple walls, the return signals can include multipath return signals because some of the return signals are produced by reflections of the radar beam off the walls before and/or after the radar beam intersects the target. While these multipath return signals can complicate the tracking process, tracking accuracy, probability of detection, and/or reduction of false detection can be improved if the multipath return signals are accounted for and utilized in the tracking process. Therefore, it is desirable to develop radar systems and methods that can utilize multipath return signals to track targets, for example, in through-the-wall radar applications.